Home » United States » Grand Tetons National Park

June 2003

Grand Tetons National Park

David Aaronson
2005-09-29 12:29:01

Displayed times (last time: )

shore. If you're doing this (we did it in reverse), we strongly recommend obtaining a map of equestrian trails first. There is an equestrian trail that parallels the Jenny Lake trail on a ridge a bit above it. While the lakefront trail was packed with people, we saw no one else on the equestrian trail the entire time. (If you don't get the map, just follow the signs to the horse corrals and follow the obvious trails from there).

Up on the equestrian trail we came across a colony of marmots living in and around this rock. Marmots aren't necessarily the most exciting of wildlife, especially for folks from the western US and Canada, but we spent a little while watching them, and vice versa (5).

There's no avoiding the crowds at Hidden Falls (6) or on the Inspiration Point trail. Hidden Falls is aptly named as it comes down a chute in the canyon walls at a 90 degree angle to the main canyon. This would be an extremely scenic spot if it were not so full of people. From here we took the boat back across the lake. The ride is short and fairly scenic although no more so than any spot around the edge of the lake.

This picture was an accident that turned out rather well (7). Coming south towards Jackson on route 26, the Triangle X ranch covers both sides of the road. We arrived right as they were driving their horses across the road to a corral on the other side. With the Tetons in the background it made for a nice picture.

Near Lake Jackson is Signal Mountain which has a road up to the top and a supposedly fine view. We're morally opposed to hiking up mountains that have a road up them already so we took an alternate hike to Grandview Point. This is in the Two Ocean Lake area on the west side of the park. Heading north from the Lake Jackson Lodge turnoff, there is a dirt road that runs off to the right. This leads off to a small parking area and a trailhead. A little ways up the trail is a sign, left leads to Grandview Point. Besides the occassional hiker, Grandview Point is popular with a wide variety of annoying insects that were unfazed by our bugspray. Besides this view of a storm coming over the northern Tetons, we took the nearly 360-degree panorama at the bottom of this page (8). The left side of the panorama shows Two Ocean Lake and the Gros Ventre rockslide in the distance, the right side has Jackson Lake and the Tetons.

Another great view of the Tetons can be had from Shadow Mountain which is directly across the valley from the highest peaks (9). This is accessible by a torturous forest road that took us a while to find. It's on some maps of the park, but there are about two dozen more roads up there that are not marked. Our belief that they wouldn't put roads there if you weren't supposed to drive on them is extra-firm when we have a rental car. So after a whole slew of deer and two suicidal mountain bikers, we finally popped out on top the mountain which has this vantage point. There are also some great campsites on the way down to the south. Incidentally, geological forces are causing Jackson Hole to widen at the rate of 1 ft (0.3m) per 100 years so be sure and check out this view while you can. Binoculars will be necessary in a couple hundred thousand years or so.